Episode 46 – Aging (ok boomer)

This was a great conversation with Nettle, chisel, damo and Aragorn! At the end we ranted about nerdy shit (like Star Wars and Xmen). The bulk of the episode involved some Zoomer opinions about how old and out of date we are. Join for the conversation and fun!

Also this was read editorial

Editorial – OK Boomer is another way to say class war

The generation gap, the imaginary fight between one age group and the next, is a perfect conflict of capitalism. A recent meme declares that “teen behind the viral OK Boomer merch rejects 1.4M by replying OK Boomer” Do you get that tight little semantic play? Do you?

Because if you are thinking or saying OK Boomer you are probably broke and you probably blame people for it that are older, set in their ways, and beneficiaries of the logics that put the USA on the top rung of nation-states after WW2. It was the History Channel that caused your life to suck and it is pretty fair to blame the children of WW2 for your problems. Of course, it isn’t exactly their problem but they did benefit from what happened and blame is the benefit that the young get from the out of touch reality that the have over the have not so we all laugh it up as we aren’t getting laughed at and boy oh boy are they dumb.

Another way to put this is “why don’t they listen to our well thought out complaints?” As we stand outside in the cold. and the first reply has to be “don’t stand out there! come inside” and now we are back to the generation game. You do what it takes to come inside, clean your pants and part your hair and you are on your way to being told in a generation or so that you are the old and out of touch.

Which remind one that somehow it isn’t about your individual fault or blame that we are noting as pattern but a system that seems to indicate that we are part of a some logic larger than age or motivation or intelligence or the coolness of calling others a great cursed name.

As Dupont said nearly two decades ago… In Anarchists must say what only anarchists can say

Outside the metaphor anarchists can refuse details and go on demonstrations, they can change their life, they can try to will the future into existence, they can go vegan, they can develop viable alternatives, can proclaim themselves against burger bars and coffee shops, they can develop green, organic, co-operative ventures. They can attempt to control every detail of their life and make it as alternative as is possible but the system itself remains out of reach, capital is untouched. When they’re saving the environment by recycling their rubbish someone else is making a profit from their unpaid labour. When they’re printing leaflets and shouting slogans for the holy cause someone less scrupulous and more organised is turning that to their political advantage.

Within the metaphor, anarchists can disrupt local traffic with their critical masses, they can park their cars on the hard shoulder and go and find themselves in the adjacent field of sugarbeet, nobody notices the sparks that fly off into the dark periphery. They can drive their tractors slowly, they can hold parties on the tarmac, they can dig up chunks of what they hate, they can make other drivers feel very, very annoyed by their pranks and provocations. But all of this is second level voluntarism (I am determined by the road therefore I rebel against the road), it is not deep down structural, it’s at the level of ‘Starbucks bad, Fairtrade good’, it’s secondary and not right in there, touching the heart of it. The best second level structure for political reflection on economic forces is democracy, but at all times in its history democracy has shown itself to be controlled by and not in control of, the economy. Those ‘anarchists’ advocating municipalism and ‘real’ democracy should take note of this failure.